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Please note: While Dry January can help you temporarily reduce your alcohol intake and improve your health, if you need help cutting back on drinking or think you might have an alcohol dependency, visit the National Institute for Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism for additional resources.

Benefits of Dry January

It’s absolutely no secret that alcohol can take a toll on your body. Alcohol can affect virtually all of your organs, from your brain to your heart to, of course, your liver. Alcohol consumption is linked to certain cancers, suppressed immunity, digestive problems, and more. 

Reducing or eliminating alcohol consumption can improve your health in many ways — but it might sound silly to give up alcohol for a month, because what can 31 days do? However, research suggests that taking short breaks from alcohol can do wonders for your health. 

If your New Year’s resolution is to cut back on or quit alcohol, Dry January is a great place to start, especially since you won’t be alone in giving up alcohol for the month. However, you may be wondering: Are there any health benefits that come with swapping alcoholic drinks for nonalcoholic beverages for only one month? We have good news: The answer is yes, and these are the following advantages you may experience from a wellbeing standpoint.

Please note: While Dry January can help you temporarily reduce your alcohol intake and improve your health, if you need help cutting back on drinking or think you might have an alcohol dependency, visit the National Institute for Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism for additional resources.

Benefits of Dry January

It’s absolutely no secret that alcohol can take a toll on your body. Alcohol can affect virtually all of your organs, from your brain to your heart to, of course, your liver. Alcohol consumption is linked to certain cancers, suppressed immunity, digestive problems, and more. 

This story is part of 12 Days of Tips, helping you make the most of your tech, home, and health during the holiday season.

Reducing or eliminating alcohol consumption can improve your health in many ways — but it might sound silly to give up alcohol for a month, because what can 31 days do? However, research suggests that taking short breaks from alcohol can do wonders for your health. 

If you try Dry January, you might experience: 

• Improved sleep
• More alertness and reduced daytime fatigue
• Fewer headaches 
• Better focus and productivity 
• Improved exercise performance 
• More good moods and fewer mood swings
• Weight loss
• Stronger immune system
• Increased hydration

Why do people do Dry January? 

People choose to do Dry January for a variety of reasons. You might consider trying Dry January if: 

• You’re trying to reach a health-related goal. For instance, avoiding alcohol may help you lose weight and improve physical fitness performance. 
• You want to reevaluate your relationship with alcohol. 
• You’ve been drinking more than usual lately and want to reset. 
• You’re supporting a friend or family member who wants to quit drinking alcohol.
• You just want to see how it feels to be sober for a month.

How to do Dry January

In theory, Dry January sounds simple: Just stop drinking alcohol, right? However, even people who reserve booze for special occasions might struggle to make it a full month with no alcohol.

Try these tips to make Dry January go smoothly: 

• Commit to the month with a friend (or a few). You can all help hold each other accountable. 

• Inform your friends and family that you’re participating in Dry January ahead of time, and keep reinforcing it so they know not to offer you drinks — because sometimes, saying “no” is the hardest part. 

• Stock up on non-alcoholic beverages (listed below) to enjoy in place of your favorite alcoholic beverages. 

• Choose different activities to fill the time you’d normally spend drinking. For example, instead of watching TV and drinking wine, try playing a board game, reading a book, completing a puzzle, calling a loved one, or drawing a picture. Learning a new skill can help you stay occupied. 

• Invite your friends to non-alcoholic outings, such as hikes, craft sessions, movies, or dinner dates.

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Even a month of giving up alcoholic drinks can give your health a boost. Getty Images

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When people find that they are having a hard time making new friends, they often blame their own awkwardness — some failure on their part. As a sociologist who studies how people connect, I’ve interviewed more than 150 people about friendship. One woman told me a typical story: She had moved to a new town after college and said that the conversations she struck up at coffee shops, work, and yoga didn’t seem to go anywhere. Forging new relationships felt hopeless. “I’m not good at it,” she said.

Yet she, like most of us, could pinpoint times in her life when making friends seemed easier. Across two decades of studying friendship, I’ve found that people’s ability to make new friends doesn’t come and go at random. Instead, it reflects, in large part, the strength of what I call the “friendship market” they are in.

In a thriving friendship market, a majority of people in a particular setting are interested in “buying” or “selling” friendship. For example, middle schoolers merging into a new high school, or first-year students arriving at college. New connections abound.

But we spend much of our lives in weaker friendship markets, where people are open to conversation, but not connection. A parent shows up at a P.T.A. meeting, and even if others are friendly, they keep their distance. Or people moves to a new city for work, and acquaintances don’t turn toward their bids for connection. Even intentionally putting yourself out there doesn’t inspire reciprocation if a friendship market has closed: Others already have fully formed friend groups.

In adulthood, open friendship markets become harder to find. But there’s a key to finding new ones: a shifting sense of self. We define ourselves through our relationships with friends. These connections help us to construct our desired selves, who we are, and who we are becoming.

The key, then, is not just to start an activity or join a club so you can meet new people. It’s to join one related to a new sense of self or an identity you’re looking to deepen. Pregnant women, for example, will look for friendships in prenatal classes — not only to find people who understand their experience but also to reaffirm their emerging identity as a mom.

Milestones make friendship markets easier to find, but markets exist for all sorts of identities, big and small. One woman I spoke to heard about a coffee club as she was starting to consider herself a coffee aficionado. Another found friendship in a pride club; although she had come out as gay years before, she felt that her queer identity was becoming a more important part of who she was. Friends connected to emerging identities bring out new sides of us. One interviewee told me that she was not religious growing up. As she started to explore Christianity, she joined a Bible study group and said she was her most “upbeat” and “cheery” self with the friends she made there.

We’ve all seen how much closer you can feel to someone when your identities change together. I worked in an office for five years with someone whom I did not know well until we were both pregnant together, both first-time moms with the same due date. We ended up taking walks, having lunches, and getting to know each other as we talked through our excitement and worries about the ways our lives would change. As our identities shifted, our friendships did as well.

Even embracing less favorable identities opens up new markets. Several people I interviewed told me about a group for single parents. Remembering the challenging period after their breakups, club members went out of their way to welcome new entrants. One member noted how her new friends offered her support as she raised a child on her own. Eventually, she got married, which booted her from the club, but two people she met there remained among her closest friends years later.

To be clear, being aware of “friendship markets” does not mean that those friendships are transactional. Friendships are not commodities or disposable. But they are also not always readily available. Everyone needs to make sure to seek them out, optimizing the possibility of connection in our busy, sometimes isolated-feeling lives.

I recommend a New Year’s resolution: Do the work to find new friendship markets in 2026, rather than waiting passively for new connections to find you. Even those with active social lives and healthy friendships benefit from new relationships that reaffirm who they are. These connections have been proven to bring us joy, fulfill our basic need to connect, and help us to live healthier, longer lives.

So the next time making new friends feels challenging, remember the structural role of friendship markets rather than blaming yourself. If you take a class not just to learn a new skill but also to deepen a part of yourself, you may find your people.

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Aude Bertrand

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Space Forge is on a mission to manufacture semiconductors in space—no humans required. And on Wednesday, the U.K.-based aerospace startup announced that it had taken a major step toward that goal by creating plasma, or superheated gas, aboard a commercial satellite for the first time.

Semiconductors require extremely precise conditions to make, and both NASA and industry groups have argued that the microgravity environment of space is better for their manufacturing than that of Earth. The reasons why are varied, but part of it has to do with how silicon behaves in such an environment—it’s just easier to get the material to adhere to the structure needed to make a semiconductor.

Indeed, Space Forge’s feat builds off previous work done on the International Space Station, says Clayton Swope, deputy director of the Aerospace Security Project at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a think tank.

“The key difference here is that this was done uncrewed, without any people, on an entirely commercial spacecraft,” he says. “This demonstration shows that semiconductor crystal manufacturing can happen in space just using machines.”

“Keeping people alive in space is expensive,” Swope adds. “If machines can do that work instead, it brings down the cost of doing manufacturing in space.”

Space Forge CEO Joshua Western said in a press release that the company’s work proves that the right environment for semiconductor manufacturing “can be achieved on a dedicated, commercial satellite—opening the door to a completely new manufacturing frontier.” Space Forge launched its satellite, ForgeStar-1, in June. Its microwave-sized factory includes a furnace that the company showed reached temperatures of around 1,832 degrees Fahrenheit (1,000 degrees Celsius).

Other companies and research teams are getting in on the budding space manufacturing industry. In 2024 another startup, Varda Space Industries, demonstrated that it was possible to grow crystals of ritonavir, an antiviral drug, on an uncrewed commercial spacecraft and return them to Earth. And researchers at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Zurich recently 3D-printed human tissues in microgravity.

In-space manufacturing is in its “early days,” Libby Jackson, head of space at the Science Museum in England, told the BBC. But testing and proving technology like Space Forge’s “really opens the door for an economically viable product, where things can be made in space and return to Earth and have use and benefit to everybody on Earth.”

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A home safe lets you keep your important information and small valuables in one convenient, private, burglar-proof location. Spend more for a fire- and water-resistant safe, and you can keep these items secure in most catastrophic events.

A break-in, flood, or house fire can cause you to lose things that can’t be easily replaced: Private and personal data, documents, electronics, heirlooms, and keepsakes. Especially if you are in a place prone to natural disasters like hurricanes and wildfires, you should consider moving these nine things into a home safe and out of your safety deposit box, wallet, and drawers.

Why a home safe and not a safe deposit box at a bank?

There are many reasons why a fireproof safe at home is preferable to a bank box. It’s not a good idea to store original copies of documents you may require immediate access to, such as passports, in a safe deposit box.

Bank safe deposit boxes are only accessible during branch operating hours and are typically sealed when the bank receives a death notice. To open a sealed safe deposit box, estate representatives must provide court papers to the bank.

FDIC insurance does not cover cash in a safe deposit box. The FDIC only insures the deposits in bank accounts, but not the contents of their safe deposit boxes.

Tip: Items in your home are typically covered by your renter or homeowners insurance policy, and the contents of a bank safe deposit box are rarely covered.

What should you store in a fireproof safe?

This is just a selection of the precious objects and important documents that many people have lying around the house or otherwise stored inappropriately that could cost a lot of time and money to replace. Installing a fireproof, waterproof safe now might prove more cost-effective than replacing all these items (and dealing with the hassle of insurance companies).

1. Safety deposit box keys

While we’re suggesting moving some items into a home safe, you may still keep other items at the bank. So, if you do store valuables in a bank safe deposit box, you’ll want to make sure you keep the keys to it in a secure place.

Tip: Keep copies of car and house keys. They aren’t expensive to replace (unless you lose your last copy, of course), but in the wrong hands, they provide easy access to your home, car, garage, and shed.

2. Cash and credit cards

The most obvious item to keep in a safe, after safe deposit box keys, is cash. Even if you only keep small amounts around the house for emergencies, it’s better off somewhere protected instead of in a sock drawer.

Infrequently used debit cards, credit cards, and key cards — these little bits of plastic easily melt and get lost without notice. Carry only the cards you use; you can’t lose what you don’t have in your purse or wallet.

3. Social Security cards, passports, and original birth certificates

COVID-19 shutdowns keep many people from accessing important identifying documents, such as passports and birth certificates, that were stored in banks. While these documents certainly need to be secured, they shouldn’t be anywhere you can’t access them readily. After all, these documents can be a hassle and time-consuming to replace.

Passports and original birth certificates are essential to proving your identity, birth date, and citizenship, and can also stand in for all ID purposes if your wallet or purse is stolen or lost. Your Social Security card is vital to establish eligibility for benefits.

Tip: When traveling abroad, experts advise carrying a photocopy of your passport and leaving the original in a hotel safe.

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In August, a clandestine team of C.I.A. officers slipped into Venezuela with a plan to collect information on Nicolás Maduro, the country’s president, whom the Trump administration had labeled a narco-terrorist.

The C.I.A. team moved about Caracas, remaining undetected for months while it was in the country. The intelligence gathered about the Venezuelan leader’s daily movements — combined with a human source close to Mr. Maduro and a fleet of stealth drones flying secretly above — enabled the agency to map out minute details about his routines.

It was a highly dangerous mission. With the U.S. embassy closed, the C.I.A. officers could not operate under the cloak of diplomatic cover. But it was highly successful. Gen. Dan Caine, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said at a news conference that because of the intelligence gathered by the team, the United States knew where Mr. Maduro moved, what he ate, and even what pets he kept.

That information was critical to the ensuing military operation, a pre-dawn raid Saturday by elite Army Delta Force commandos, the riskiest U.S. military operation of its kind since members of the Navy’s SEAL Team 6 killed Osama bin Laden in a safe house in Pakistan in 2011.

The result was a tactically precise and swiftly executed operation that extracted Mr. Maduro from his country with no loss of American life, a result heralded by President Trump amid larger questions about the legality and rationale for the U.S. actions in Venezuela.

Mr. Trump has justified what was named Operation Absolute Resolve as a strike against drug trafficking. But Venezuela is hardly as big a player in the international drug trade as other countries. Officials had previously told congressional leaders that their objective in Venezuela was not regime change. And Mr. Trump has long said he opposes U.S. foreign occupations.

Yet on Saturday, the president proclaimed that American officials were in charge of Venezuela, and that the United States would rebuild the country’s oil infrastructure.

In contrast to messy U.S. interventions of the past — by the military in Panama or the C.I.A. in Cuba — the operation to grab Mr. Maduro was virtually flawless, according to multiple officials familiar with the details, some of whom spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe the plans.

In the run-up, Delta Force commandos rehearsed the extraction inside a full-scale model of Mr. Maduro’s compound that the Joint Special Operations Command had built in Kentucky. They practiced blowing through steel doors at ever-faster paces.

The military had been readying for days to execute the mission, waiting for good weather conditions and a time when the risk of civilian casualties would be minimized.

Amid the heightened tensions, Mr. Maduro had been rotating between six and eight locations, and the United States did not always learn where he intended to stay until late in the evenings. To execute the operation, the U.S. military needed confirmation that Mr. Maduro was at the compound they had trained to attack.

In the days leading up to the raid, the United States deployed increasing numbers of Special Operations aircraft, specialized electronic warfare planes, armed Reaper drones, search-and-rescue helicopters, and fighter jets to the region — last-minute reinforcements that analysts said indicated the only question was when military action would happen, not if.

The United States had made other moves intended to ratchet up the pressure on Mr. Maduro and prepare for the raid to capture him. A week earlier, the C.I.A. had carried out a drone strike on a port facility in Venezuela. And for months, the U.S. military has conducted a legally disputed campaign that has destroyed dozens of boats and killed at least 115 people in the Caribbean and eastern Pacific.

In recent days, Mr. Maduro tried to head off an American raid, offering the United States access to Venezuelan oil, Mr. Trump said Saturday. A U.S. official said the deal, offered on Dec. 23, would have had Mr. Maduro leave the country for Turkey. But Mr. Maduro angrily rejected that plan, the official said. It was clear, the official added, that Mr. Maduro was not serious.

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Whooping cough cases are sweeping in the U.S., with tens of thousands infected and at least 13 people dead from the bacterial infection this year. While the infection rate is lower than last year, it remains above typical prepandemic years, and the number of deaths has risen.

The respiratory infection, also known as pertussis, is characterized by a severe, violent cough that can leave people—especially infants—struggling to breathe. Although rarely fatal, its lingering symptoms have earned it the moniker of the “100-day cough.”

The disease is caused by the bacterium Bordetella pertussis, which emits toxins into a person’s respiratory tract, making early treatment with antibiotics vital to managing the infection. The bacterium is easily spread between people, both through direct contact and droplets from the mouth or nose.

As of December 20, the U.S. and its territories has seen 27,871 diagnosed cases of whooping cough so far this year, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Last year at this time, the number was 41,922, a staggering increase after four years of less than 10,000 cases annually during the peak of the COVID pandemic. In the years between 2003 and 2019, the U.S. typically saw between 10,000 to 20,000 cases annually; the highest rate during that time was in 2012, with 48,277 cases.

At least 13 people have died of pertussis so far this year, according to a recent report from the Pan American Health Organization. Provisional CDC data from last year noted 10 deaths from the infection.

Public health experts fear that the sustained high rates of whooping cough this year, after last year’s spike, may be a symptom of declining vaccination levels.

The DTaP vaccine protects infants and young children from pertussis, while the Tdap vaccination offers protection for older children and adults. Both shots also protect against tetanus and diphtheria. The CDC has traditionally recommended these vaccinations from the age of two months; under the agency’s guidelines, children should receive four doses in their first two years and a total of six doses before reaching age 13. But for children born in 2021, the most recent group for whom data are available, only 79 percent had received four shots of DTaP by the age of two.

Whooping cough is most dangerous among infants under a year old, and public health experts also recommend that pregnant people get a Tdap vaccine to transfer antibodies to newborns. All adults are also advised to get a Tdap vaccine every 10 years to ensure continued protection.

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In the aftermath of his spectacular falling out with President Donald Trump last year, Elon Musk blasted the Republican Party as a corrupt force that was “bankrupting” the United States of America.

But now, after months in the political wilderness, the volatile tech baron has indicated that he will once again devote his enormous fortune to electing GOP politicians, this time ahead of the midterm elections in 2026.

“America is toast if the radical left wins,” declared Musk on X Thursday. “They will open the floodgates to illegal immigration and fraud. Won’t be America anymore.”

Musk’s post quoted, and seemingly confirmed, another post from a conservative influencer who claimed that Musk was “going all-in” on funding Republicans this year.

That echoed reports from December that Musk had begun cutting “big checks” for congressional Republicans following a reconciliation dinner with Vice President J.D. Vance.

It is all a far cry from Musk’s promise last July to plough his billions into a new “America Party” designed to break what he described as a bipartisan consensus in favor of government borrowing.

“When it comes to bankrupting our country with waste and graft, we live in a one-party system, not a democracy,” Musk claimed at the time. “Today, the America Party is formed to give you back your freedom.”

Those plans quickly faltered as one of the world’s foremost over-promisers, who has a long history of failed projects and missed deadlines, ran up against the boring, difficult work of actually getting a new party off the ground.

By August, The Wall Street Journal was reporting that Vance had persuaded Musk to back off his plans for a third party, causing him to cancel a planned call with political gurus.

On Monday, The Washington Post further detailed Vance’s months-long backroom effort to patch up the relationship between Trump and Musk, though the peace reportedly remains delicate.

Musk, currently the world’s richest human with an estimated fortune of $726 bilion, donated more than $290 million to help elect Trump and other Republican candidates in the 2024 election cycle.

But the two men’s relationship explosively unraveled last June after Musk claimed that Trump was covering up his alleged ties to Jeffrey Epstein, and Trump threatened to revoke all Musk’s government contracts.

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To those “who view this administration with distrust or disdain,” Mr. Mamdani said, “I promise you this. If you are a New Yorker, I am your mayor. Regardless of whether we agree, I will protect you, celebrate with you, mourn alongside you and never, not for a second, hide from you.”

The star-studded ceremony at City Hall featured two avatars of the progressive wing of American politics who had helped propel Mr. Mamdani to the mayoralty: Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, a fellow Democrat representing parts of Queens and the Bronx, delivered opening remarks, and Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont administered the oath of office, with Mr. Mamdani, the city’s first Muslim mayor, resting his hand on two Qurans held by his wife, Rama Duwaji.

The message from the stage was unmistakable: In New York City, the left is ascendant. And to national Democratic leaders struggling to regain the party’s footing, Mr. Mamdani’s victory and the excitement surrounding it may suggest a path forward.

“New York, thank you for inspiring our nation,” Mr. Sanders said. “Thank you for giving us, from coast to coast, the hope and the vision that we can create government that works for all, not just the wealthy and the few.”

The event took place before thousands of well-wishers who flooded the plaza in front of City Hall and poured into a section of Broadway more typically closed off for parades down the Canyon of Heroes, but this time for the inauguration of a self-described champion of the underrepresented.

Amid the sea of knit caps, there were union emblems, Democratic Socialists of America apparel and the occasional kaffiyeh. Attendees stuffed hand warmers into gloves and shifted from foot to foot to warm their toes.

The midday event followed a significantly more modest and subdued swearing-in ceremony just after midnight, during which Mr. Mamdani legally became mayor of New York City.

The subsequent public ceremony and adjoining block party captured how many New Yorkers have hungered for a more earnest-seeming, more hopeful alternative to 21st-century American politics, and have been eager to turn the page on the cronyism and self-regarding swagger of the Eric Adams mayoralty.

After much equivocation, Mr. Adams, who once called himself the future of the Democratic Party, attended Thursday’s ceremony, and Mr. Mamdani spoke kindly of his ascent from an impoverished background to mayor of New York City. But when Mr. Mamdani nodded to mayors he admired from the past, Mr. Adams was not among them.

Shortly after the ceremony ended, Mr. Mamdani traveled to Brooklyn to announce that he had enacted several executive orders, including one that revoked all prior executive orders issued after Sept. 26, 2024, the date of Mr. Adams’s indictment.

“That was a date that marked a moment when many New Yorkers decided politics held nothing for them,” Mr. Mamdani said at a news conference in the borough.

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Mamdani New York Maor 2026

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The new year has arrived, and so have the Quadrantids. The first meteor shower of 2026 is known for its bright fireballs and bolides—large meteors that explode in the atmosphere in dramatic fashion, sometimes raining meteorites onto Earth below.

The Quadrantids are an annual shower running from November through early January. This year, the Quadrantids will peak on the night of January 3 through the early hours of January 4. Best viewed from the Northern Hemisphere, the ideal time to get outside and try to spot some of these luminous fireballs is in the predawn hours on January 4, according to NASA. Unfortunately, a full moon rises the night before, so the moon’s light may interfere with your ability to see these shooting stars.

To have the best chance of spotting a meteor, look for the Quadrantids’ radiant—the point of the sky where they appear to originate. First observed in 1825, the meteor shower radiates from an obsolete constellation called Quadrans Muralis—named by a French astronomer in 1795, it was left out of the International Astronomical Union’s list of official constellations in 1922. Instead, look for Ursa Major, or the Big Dipper, and gaze toward the end of its handle.

he Quadrantids don’t come from the stars, however. Unlike other meteor showers, which tend to be caused by debris falling from comets, the Quadrantids are produced by an asteroid, 2003 EH1. Discovered in 2003, the asteroid may actually be a dead comet, NASA notes. Some astronomers think there may also be a second object that contributes to the meteor shower, a comet called 96P/Machholz.

If you can get outside in the early hours of January 4, move as far as you safely can from bright light sources, such as street lamps and buildings. Give your eyes 30 minutes to adjust to the dark, and look toward the northern sky. Then just be patient!

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